


Storm Nomenclature

by tehJai



Series: About A Dog [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, F/M, naming your dog, urianger in his underwear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25946734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehJai/pseuds/tehJai
Summary: There's a storm.  The puppy gets scared.  Urianger and Tiona must come to his rescue.
Relationships: Urianger Augurelt/Warrior of Light
Series: About A Dog [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883167
Comments: 14
Kudos: 19





	Storm Nomenclature

The summer storms in Ul'dah were especially ferocious this year – the lightning strikes were bright enough to double the light in the adventuring hall at intervals, and the wind howled around the windows, causing the shutters to rattle and create an unholy racket through the halls and rooms. 

One of the private rooms had its door slightly ajar, and its occupants seemed unbothered by the meteorological cacophony: the lanky elezen man and the curvaceous viera woman sitting together in their large bed. Each was reading a book, and only occasionally looked up and over at one another with a smile when the lightning flashed so bright that their pages were momentarily unreadable. 

"Sounds like it's getting worse," the viera remarked, one of her long leporine ears angling toward the window. 

"Indeed," came the elezen's reply, and he shifted a little, winding an arm around his companion's waist. "Ever fortunate it is that we were not caught out in the yard as it breweth."

"Hm. I _hate_ rainwater in my ears," the viera said thoughtfully, turning a page and cuddling closer to the man, who chuckled in response. 

"An odd thing to find bothersome, Tiona," he murmured thoughtfully. 

Tiona sat up, grinning, the tip of her nose twitching below her deep red eyes. "No more odd than avoiding large bodies of water, Urianger."

His cheeks grew red and for a moment Urianger looked at her with his jaw a bit slack. "I… have not an appropriate response to thy ribbing."

"We're both odd," she said, leaning back against the pillows and placing her book atop the swell of her chest. "It's why we're stuck together like this."

He grinned over at her as though ready to retort further, but then –

Suddenly Tiona had put her book to the side, sitting up fully with her ears flicking to-and-fro. "... Do you hear that?"

Urianger was looking at her with a half-amused, half-exasperated expression, but shrugged. "Nay."

"From behind the cheese shelf–" She was already up and out of the bed and around the bookshelves that separated their bed from the rest of the room, ears pitched forward. 

Approaching the large oaken shelf (upon which the odd couple did, per its name, store various wheels of cheese), Tiona squatted down to floor level, leaning to see what was behind it. 

Curled up in the corner, whining softly, trying to hide his eyes with his fluffy tail, was the small black-and-brown puppy that Urianger had rescued and brought home. Tiona tried to reach for the creature, clicking her tongue to get him to come out. 

The puppy whined once more, but the tail wrapped round its nose tried to wag before he took a tentative step toward Tiona's outstretched hand–

Then a crack of thunder reverberated through the room and the pup retreated further into the corner and out of Tiona's reach. Sitting back on her haunches, she looked back over her shoulder. 

Urianger was watching, having long since abandoned his own book and having closed the distance between the bed and the shelf. "...he hath returned from his sojourns with miss Synnove, then?"

"Looks like. The storm has scared him, he's all the way in the corner. You've got a longer reach than me – could you fetch him?" She stood up and hauled the shelf away from the wall a fulm or two – as far as the large wooden piece could move in the small kitchen they kept. 

Nodding, Urianger managed to wedge his narrow frame between the shelf and the wall, his robes picking up the dust from behind there, and shimmied down to reach the puppy, his fingertips managing to brush against his nose. The elezen let out an involuntary, higher-pitched-than-normal chuckle as the pup licked at his fingers. "Ahh, he doth _drool_ upon me–"

Tiona was holding the shelf steady, her face ducked into her elbow as she shook with silent laughter. The wood creaked and groaned, the puppy's claws scrabbled against the floorboards and Urianger said " _ow"_ more than once – but eventually he emerged, covered in dust and dog hair, with the puppy safely tucked under one arm. 

Putting the shelf back with a grunt, Tiona turned to her lover, who was dusty and disheveled and red in the face. "What a heroic thing you've done," she said with a grin, reaching to put his hair back in place. "Let's sit with him, aye?"

Urianger nodded, but then suddenly his head drew back and he sneezed, overwhelmed from the dust hidden behind the shelf. The puppy pitched its head to one side and then the other, confused by the sound. 

"Aw. That's cute," Tiona said, reaching to take the pup from his arms. "Go wash the dust off, O Saviour of Puppies, and the three of us can get back to what we were doing." The puppy gave a hearty _bark!_ but then another crack of thunder sounded and he tried to hide his face in Tiona's chest. 

"Of course," he said, offering Tiona and the puppy both a haplessly besotted grin before quickly making his way to the washroom, stripping off his dusty outer robe and wiping his face clean. With only Tiona and the puppy in the room to see him, he walked back to the bed in only his high-cut smallclothes, closing the door to the hallway on his way. 

He found Tiona sitting cross-legged on the bed, the puppy curled up in her lap. The smile across her face when she saw him was more than a little lascivious –

But when Urianger climbed back into bed, this time shimmying under the covers, the pup pounced excitedly on his chest and licked at his nose. There would be no opportunity for a tryst with the very fluffy and highly adorable third wheel in bed with them. 

"I think he likes you most of all," Tiona said, cuddling up beside him and scratching the pup behind the ears, chuckling as he looked between the viera and the elezen and back again. This time, when the thunder rolled, the two of them reassured the pup with low voices and plenty of petting, and soon he was belly-up and snoozing in the crook of Urianger's arm, unbothered by the storm. 

"He is a most endearing creature," the elezen mused, "even if he tendeth to find trouble."

"We should probably give him a name, you know," Tiona said thoughtfully, resting her head on Urianger's shoulder, idly drawing patterns on his chest with the fingers of one hand.

"Aye, then we would have the means to _call_ him when he findeth himself stuck behind the cheese."

"Heh. Any ideas?"

" _Deke_ seemeth to be an appropriate name for such a precocious creature."

“It suits him.” Tiona snuggled closer to both of them and, in time, the three of them, all together like a tiny makeshift family, slept soundly and close while the storm raged on outside.

**Author's Note:**

> So I guess this is a series now.
> 
> I'd been holding out and trying to wait for these little flash-fics to come about in some semblance of order, but I realized if I waited for that, I'd probably never post anything. So, here is where you'll find flash fics about Tiona, Urianger, and their dog.
> 
> Highly important fanfiction matters. Also I'm a huge space nerd and, yes, their dog is named for a Mercury astronaut.
> 
> P.S. Draya is wonderful and lets me name drop her characters at will.


End file.
